Opening of the 2022/2023 Concert Season Filharmonia Narodowa

Go to content
Opening of the 2022/2023 Concert Season
Andrzej Boreyko, photo: Michał Zagórny

Gustav Mahler completed his Second Symphony, furnished with the subtitle ‘Resurrection’, in 1894. Three years later, he converted to Catholicism and decided to be baptised, which allowed him to become director of the Vienna Opera. Mahler’s Second Symphony constitutes a musical treatise of religion, life and death, the promise of resurrection, and a God who is not enclosed within a particular confession and to whom every human being is journeying. In this five-movement masterwork, he traces the vertical trajectory of human existence. He also provides suitable contrasts and ensures the listener of moments of respite between movements of an intense musical charge. In the monumental vocal-instrumental finale, he forges a suggestive vision of the final judgment, but that is not the work’s point of gravity. The apocalyptic melody of Dies irae gives way to the brightness of the resurrection, earlier presaged in the alto song ‘Urlicht’ (‘Pre-light’). The a cappella choir ends the work with the words ‘I shall die in order to live!’ You are invited to follow this compositional vision, which fascinates listeners irrespective of their religious worldview, by Andrzej Boreyko and the Warsaw Philharmonic ensembles in the concert inaugurating the new season.

Urszula Ciołkiewicz-Latek

The Warsaw Philharmonic Strategic Patron of the Year – PKO Bank Polski – warmly welcomes you to join us in this concert